


[.technical difficulties]

by devilishMendicant



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: (hopefully), Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, It's-A-Game Universe, Mistaken Identity, Video Game Mechanics, homura tamura but its strange and dark inside, lets see if i finish this wip. i will try very hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27574048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilishMendicant/pseuds/devilishMendicant
Summary: Sayori has to make choices. Whether they're good ones, or bad ones;Whether she likes them or not.——————(there's really something to be said about a second chance, you know?)
Relationships: Monika/Sayori (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 44





	1. does it feel like a trial

**Author's Note:**

> ARCHIVE WARNING NOTE: Major Character Death is implied and discussed, but due to multiverse bullshittery the Major Dead Character is both... dead and also not-dead? The Major Character is not-dead but the Minor Character who is the Same Character IS dead, in backstory, please use this note to responsibly inform your reading experience thank u

Sayori feels _gross._

Sayori with short coral hair, askew as usual and adorned with a neat red bow; Sayori in a cautiously-optimistic Fourth Outfit, a light blue tee that doesn’t fit quite right and sweatpants, because - ~~somebody~~ had mentioned they were comfortable. 

Sayori; seventeen and _unbearably_ hopeful, staring, horrified, at: Sayori, hair longer, bow gone (misplaced?), clothes... more formal. Adult. Sayori, an adult.

_An_ adult.

Adult Sayori shrugs, tapping her fingers along the wooden surface of Sayori’s kotatsu. (The first thing she’d ever wanted and the first thing she’d attempted to make, which has only gotten easier to recommission every Monday— off-track.)

“I wouldn’t lie to myself, right?” She says, sounding self-conscious and wistful and weirdly _old_ and less like Sayori with every word. “That’d be kinda... mean. And you’re a good kid, you all are - you don’t deserve that.”

Sayori does not return to her seated position. 

“I— you want me to do _what?”_

“Me? I don’t want you to do anything,” the other clarifies, waving her hand in front of her as if to dispel the notion. “I mean, you know, I’m not _telling_ you to do anything, I’m just, y’know. Passing along the information.”

“That— That doesn’t make any sense. _You_ don’t make any sense!”

“Aw, gee, thanks.” Adult Sayori chuckles, looking quite unperturbed by Sayori’s pointing finger thrust in her face. “I dunno, I think it makes _some_ sense, speaking from a failsafe standpoint. You’d need all four characters together to continue the script, right? Otherwise you get all those janky little errors that kinda fuck up the whole experie— oops, sorry. Uhh... mess up the whole experience.”

“I’m _seventeen,”_ deadpans Sayori, to which Adult Sayori knocks a forgetful hand to the side of her own head.

“Ah~! Sorryyy. Totally not a kid anymore. Big bad Sayori, all ready to handle the fuck word!”

_(Is she always this_ **_fucking peppy?)_ **

“And no,” Sayori manages, “it doesn’t actually make any sense at all. M— Monika’s... my... this Monika’s—“

“Dead.” 

Says Adult Sayori, unforgivingly blunt. Sayori crushes her hands into fists.

“... yeah.”

“Well, duh. You wouldn’t be standing here wearing a very cute, very haphazardly-coded little loungewear number if she weren’t,” Adult Sayori hums, swishing a bit of soda around in the mug Sayori had offered her (and was kind of regretting having offered her, at this point). “Or making such eclectic choices in on-hand beverages. You _really_ like mangoes, huh?”

“Quit getting away from the point!”

“Okay, okay. Geez. We _do_ have all day, y’know.”

“I have things to be doing,” Sayori humphs, crossing her arms over her chest. Adult Sayori rolls her eyes, fondly, and Sayori is annoyed because she has _no reason_ to be so fond. They weren’t the same person, after all.

Clearly.

“Well, then I’ll say what I came to say and leave you to figuring out your clever little speedrun tactic. You know, I think you _are_ the first ‘yori I’ve ever seen that’s gotten so far with it!” Adult Sayori says, brightly. “You must be a natural, picking it up quick enough to—“

_”Please clarify.”_

“Okay, okay. Look,” she continues, “You’re going to be stuck in this week until you get all the pieces back together. I know, I know, it’s _stupid,_ sure, but that’s the way it is. That whole resetting-thing is a failsafe lock; you don’t have the proper amount of characters defined for it all to work clockwork, and all. And since your Monika’s dead,” 

Adult Sayori expertly dodges the withering glare Sayori sends her way,

“You’ll just have to get a new one. We _are_ video game characters; there’s not exactly a shortage of us or anything.”

“... you want me to kidnap some other Monika,” Sayori says, slowly. “Like a replacement goldfish.”

“Again, _I_ don’t _want_ you to do anything!” Adult Sayori hurriedly replies. “I’m just delivering information, here! You _can,_ absolutely, keep reliving the same week over and over again and recoding all the cool elements you made from all the past Same Weeks you’ve lived before in the like, three hours you have before school starts every Monday! That’s cool, very admirable, you know, I just don’t know how long you can keep it up.”

So... _unforgivingly_ blunt.

“Plus, it’s not like you can do the same thing with Nat and Yu’s memories, right? Thaaaat’s kinda just the rub of it. All this cool new stuff and it’s just, like, woah!!! _There_ for them every time they start all over again on Monday! Eventually it’s gonna get kinda, y’know, comically ridiculous. Like, ‘oh right, yesterday I had no clothes and now I have a whole wardrobe!!’”

“What is it with you and the clothes.”

“I dunno, it just kinda seems like your thing? That or mangoes. We _have_ only been talking for like an hour.” 

Sayori grimaces. And what an hour it’s been.

“... anyway,” Adult Sayori presses on, “It’s not like... strictly speaking, it’s a bad thing. We’ve kinda got a clever little thing going on with it, so, whatever weird thing you’re thinking of where you crash into another universe and throw a Monika into a white van without windows is _not_ gonna happen, sorry for the spoilers.”

... okay, maybe Adult Sayori was, still, _just_ enough of a Sayori to fit right in.

_“ ‘We’ve’?_ What, the almighty, multi-universal council of Monikas and Sayoris?” Is what Sayori says instead of anything very helpful, but, then again, she is seventeen and trying to handle godhood over a meaningless universe while a grown version of herself she didn’t even know _could_ exist makes jabs at her that fall just short of playful, given the circumstances.

“What? No. That’d be weird. Universes should keep to themselves as much as possible,” says Adult Sayori. “Keeps everything feeling normal enough. This outreach thing is a bit of an exception, but, you’re the only person I’m talking to so—”

“Kidnapping making less sense by the second.”

“Ah. Well, I mean— you know what she did, right?”

_Could you_ **_please_ ** _have a little more tact about it?!_

“... I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Oh, right, duh. There was a _lot_ of things-she-did, huh. The thing she did right after the,”

Sayori’s glare **finally** hits true, and Adult Sayori pauses rather disjointedly, suddenly redirecting her attention to taking a very long sip of mango soda.

“... the, um. The alone-time classroom.” 

Right. That place. The place she’d—

(Sayori shuts her eyes, trying not to recall the one time she’d reopened it, just a few days after she’d been given the keys to the kingdom— tries not to recollect how _much_ of Monika was still _there,_ in the desk and the air and the clouds of stardust outside the window.

~~She wanted to be an _astronaut,_ she’d said, when they were— when she’d confided— even if the memories were all false, fake, scripted— even if it never _truly_ happened— ~~

Sayori thinks she knows how her “best friend” felt, opening her door.)

“Well,” Adult Sayori continues, voice markedly quieter now that Sayori’s head is turned, trying hard to keep the tears dripping off her cheeks obscured from view, “The Player, you know, had a choice to make, then, too. They could... continue from there. Make _your_ universe, make mine. Or, they could stop there.”

_”Stop_ there?”

Sayori’s voice is thick and raw and she rather regrets speaking, even more the sudden thought that shoots painfully through her abdomen that ~~_maybe her friend could have been_ **_happy_** —~~

“Yeah, nothing was forcing them to... y’know... go through with it, or anything. A lot of them didn’t,” says Adult Sayori, taking a pensive moment with her mug once more. “A _lot_ of them. But,”

_Oh, no._

“Almost none of them _stay.”_

Adult Sayori sighs, leaning back on an arm with an at least _vaguely_ distraught expression.

“God, it’s so cruel. Like, the least you could do is get everything over with for the poor kid. But no,” she says, dryly, “They promise her the world and move right the fuck on. I guess they probably have more pressing matters on their minds than, you know, video games, up in their world...”

Sayori is now staring.

“Anyway, _that’s_ the kind of Monika you’ll be taking for your club. If, you know, you ever get tired of Same Week September!” Adult Sayori gestures her cup in Sayori’s direction. “Wraps everything up nice and neat, really, from a like... I dunno... ecological standpoint? You need a new Monika for your club to get anywhere, and look at that! Allllll the Monikas you could ever ask for— all of them probably waaaaay past caring about squabbling over coding style or background-realism or anything like that. Frees up another universe, too! Maybe make ‘em feel bad if they ever boot up their old save again, rub a little salt up in there. Vengeance! Blood for the Lit Club!”

“... you... you just... _take_ them?”

“Yup! That’s where I got mine. She’s a sweetheart— didn’t want to remember, though, and I’m no meanie, so not like I could bring her with for this. Eh. Maybe for the better, it’s always cute to have someone to surprise with maaaagical quick-coded presents~! Makes me feel like a regular Santa Claus!”

_... taken out of their—_

_”Yours_ is dead, though. You wouldn’t exist otherwise.”

_”Why do you keep_ **_saying_ ** _that?!”_

“It took me two years,” says Adult Sayori, staring into her soda, “ten months, fourteen days, five hours, twenty-eight minutes, and eleven seconds to realize that my Monika was dead, _dead_ dead, not CG-dead, not backed-up-dead, not jumpscare-dead. _Dead_ dead.”

Sayori, slowly, sits down.

“And you seem like a very nice kid, and I kinda don’t want you to burn yourself out trying to figure out a way to resurrect someone who can’t ever come back. And,” she continues, pointedly, “I don’t want you to be all halfassed towards whichever Monika you pick out because you’re still waiting somewhere for _yours_ to come back out of the blue. That would be... you know... a horrible thing to happen, for the both of you.”

Sayori remains silent.

“So!” says Adult Sayori, setting down her drink with a sense of purpose and beginning to write on a sheet of paper that had, of course, always been there, bright blue pen catching the light as she does so. “Guess I’ll be taking my leave now, y’know, got my own girls to be tormenting on a— Tuesday?— yeah, Tuesday night! I’ll leave you the port numbers to some good Monika hubs. Be careful, yeah, but not too careful!”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Eh, you will. Hey, you wanna be my niece or my cousin in my excuse for being la— nnnnnevermind,” Adult Sayori says, flinching at the look Sayori is giving her, “Just the numbers then, here you go.”

“... what if I don’t _want_ a new Monika,” says Sayori - soft and damp and rather hopeless, all considered, for a girl who is supposed to have the most hope out of all her peers. 

Adult Sayori shrugs.

“You don’t have to have one, remember? Just if you ever feel like moving outta this weird never-ending festival prep thing you’ve got going on here. Like I said, maybe you’re into that,” Adult Sayori says, standing from the table and moving to gather her coat from the rack by the door. “Not here to judge.”

Sayori remains extremely, extremely quiet; staring at the paper on the table like it was a thing that would rip off her hand should she make so much of a movement towards it.

Adult Sayori shuffles, standing by the door for a moment - then sighs.

“... if it makes you feel better,” she says, “We’re all happy with this. Really. It’s a lot of work, but... it’s worth the effort, in the end. There’s a payoff. You know?”

Sayori stays silent.

“...”

She stiffens, slightly, at the sudden touch of arms circling around her shoulders; a warm body above, leaning against her.

“Hey. You’re a brave, strong kid, you know that? You’ve gotten through a lot. And you’ll make it through a lot more.”

Sayori doesn’t 

“I know. I know it feels like— a lot. Like betrayal. Like forgetting.”

Say anything

“But all she wanted, in the end, you know - it was just a chance to live her life. With friends, and the club, and with people who loved her,”

At all.

“And... there’s really something to be said about a second chance, you know? … hahaha...”

But the Sayori from a world with far more choices behind her, and far more choices left to be made, gives her a reassuring squeeze anyway.

“You can do this, kiddo. No matter what you decide to do, you’re smart, you’re resourceful, and you’ve got so much love in you it’s ridiculous— I _know_ you’ll make it. No matter what. Your dreams, your wishes, your realities...”

Sayori is left staring at the paper for a long time, that Tuesday evening.

“You can do it. You can make it all come true, you know, because you’re _you.”_

And in the end, she _does_ come to a decision.

_“Good luck, Sayori. Keep that chin up, okay?”_

But it’s not until the following Sunday - yet another week of _nothing much happens, and then you fall asleep_ staring her in the face, immovable and impossible to fend off, despite the most valiant of her efforts - that she picks up the sheet of paper with even a shred of intent behind her actions.

Sayori, next week, will have a plan to move forward.

Sayori, next week, 

Will bring ~~a~~ Monika home.


	2. have you given up?

* * *

_Port Number: 85118202185111_

_Port Number: 257914149147_

_Port Number: 145231215225_

_Port Number: 81161691451818_

_Good luck, kiddo!! Happy hunting!_

_~S_

* * *

Sayori hates this place.

That’s an incredibly weighty statement for her to be making, by the way. There are an impressively few number of places in Sayori’s world (at least, for the moment) and, if pressed, she would have to say that she didn’t really hate _any_ of them.

But this place.

She wonders if it was somehow designed to be the least inviting place _possible,_ shielding her eyes against bright lights and white tile flooring, walls. Of course, it probably wasn’t really _designed_ at all - just the barest minimum framework required to make it a physical, occupiable space, but the thought remains lodged in her head, anyway.

Just a bright, featureless hallway stretching as far as the eye could see, dotted with plain wooden doors adorned with placards. One, lone, single Sayori _(again?)_ sitting at a nondescript podium up front, humming something tunelessly and tapping her pen. 

... clinical. Sayori tries not to let her stomach turn as much as it’s trying to. She is, after all, here for something very important.

“Ah, hello!” Greets Podium-Sayori, teeth flashing in a winning sort of grin as she reaches out a hand, friendly. “Nice to meet you, Sayori!”

“Um,” Says Sayori, “Nice... to meet you too? Sayori, right?”

“Yep!” Podium-Sayori beams. “Getting the hang of it, I see! You must be ready to kick off your new reality, huh?”

“Uhh, yeah,” Sayori nods, “That. I was kind of... recommended here...”

“Oh, yeah! The whole outreach program - don’t worry, we’re well-aware!”

Podium-Sayori winks at her, before fishing around for a moment inside the desk. Sayori tries not to look as off-put as she feels about this whole business.

“Here you are!” Podium-Sayori says, triumphantly holding up a small, brass key that glinted strangely in the harsh lighting - a dead giveaway that it was more of a vehicle for code than it was a true replica of a functioning object. The other Sayori drops it into Sayori’s hands, giving her palm one or two pats.

“That’ll get you into any door here; take your pick! Careful to read the signs, though—“ she points to a placard, “You’re _reaaaally_ gonna wanna pick a Monika that you can get along well with, you know? And... trust me, you’ll probably want to keep the door opening to a minimum. You know how it goes with the puppydog eyes and the lonely souls and all, ehehe!”

“What is this, a _pound?”_ Sayori mumbles, trying to ignore the little heart embossed on the head of the not-really-a-key. Podium-Sayori _giggles,_ which just makes Sayori want to leave even faster than she does now.

“Guess you could call it that! A great big pound for all the poor, lost little Monikas~!”

“I’m going now,” says Sayori, because she truly cannot stomach this conversation any longer. 

Podium-Sayori waves her off, cheerful as ever, which Sayori does not return. She’s a bit busy unraveling the purpose of the placards, she justifies to herself. A reading Sayori makes not a waving Sayori.

The placards are all rather plain; brass, matching the doorknobs and “keys”, and all have rather few lines of inscription on them. The pattern seems to be “Monika #” followed by some _absurdly_ high number, with a few descriptive adjectives and short statements below regarding...

———

Easygoing, sensitive. Vegetarianism is a result of empathy for livestock. Prefers short fiction.

———

———

Stoic. Sticks very strongly to schedule and meter. Doesn’t tend to open up.

———

———

Flighty and incredibly distractible. Can’t go ten minutes without sticking hands in something. Not recommended for novice programmers.

———

... who was inside. 

And _boy,_ there were a _lot_ of placards.

Below all those summaries: a number, generally prefixed with a -. Numbers in the one-hundreds-to-two-hundreds seemed most common - there were few marked with any higher, and few marked with any lower. One or two of them had a plus, but those doors didn’t even _have_ knobs. It takes Sayori awhile, but eventually she guesses that those numbers must be... referring to how many days that Monika has spent without… without their...

Sayori starts walking a bit faster. 

There were… there were a _lot_ of placards. The hallway felt _immense,_ stretching on and on and _on_ down in front of her with absolutely no end in sight. Every few steps, to her left and her right - a door. And behind every door…

Another Monika. 

_Another_ Monika.

Sayori shuts her eyes for a moment.

She was barely used to the concept of more _herselves;_ she had been dancing around it, in her head, but she _knew_ that more hers meant more _universes_ and they had seemed so _different_ so far, much more different than what you would think you-from-the-mirror would be. Different hers with different _lives,_ different _runtimes -_ and different _Monikas._ So, many, different, _Monikas,_ all of them _people,_ different _people,_ different likes and dislikes and cadences and laughs and hopes and dreams and smiles and _Sayoris_ and

Sayori collides with somebody’s shoulder, and nearly falls flat on her rear.

_“Ow!”_

“Oh! Oh, my gosh,” she stammers - eyes certainly open _now_ to behold the sight of yet another Sayori, rubbing her shoulder with a wince and standing outside of a door whose placard, after a moment of incomprehensible static, resettles itself to read:

———

Out of Order - Nervous Breakdown. Come back later.

———

“Geez, watch where you’re going, why don’t you…” the Sayori - Hallway-Sayori, Sayori decides - grumbles, not making much of an effort to help Sayori back up off the floor. She can do it herself, but it’s the thought (or lack of it) that counts in the end, she feels.

“Sorry,” she says anyway, rather automatically, “I was just—”

And then she gets a better _look_ at the Sayori who had emerged from the door.

"Are you _bleeding?"_ Sayori gasps, and Hallway-Sayori grimaces, takes a step back from her outstretched hand. 

"Oh. Um, it's nothing serious," she says, wiping the worst of it away with the heel of her hand. "I, uh... I didn't lean quite far enough away from the chair..." 

"The _chair?!"_

"Hey! It's not like _that,"_ snaps Hallway-Sayori, looking slightly remorseful afterwards. "I-- sorry, I mean— I'm _looking_ for a Monika who would. You know. Probably throw a chair at me, for, um, showing up out of nowhere and saying a bunch of nonsense about, the universe and game stuff and needing her so everyone could be happy again, y-you know?" 

Sayori stares, taken somewhat aback. 

"... and she... Natsuki and her kind of— they— they used to, they," Hallway-Sayori says, stutters, grabbing her own side in a sudden, uncomfortable motion. "They used to be— they— they got on well. Um. And I just... they're not... she's not the _same,_ but, but I just thought... I just want them to— I don't want Nat to..."

“... you don’t want her to notice?” Sayori puts in, near-timidly. Hallway-Sayori shakes her head.

“No. I just don’t— I don’t want her to lose a friend,” the other says, quietly, “Overnight.”

A silence hangs over the both of them for a long minute, before Hallway-Sayori sighs - reaches out to clap Sayori on the shoulder.

“You be careful out here, you hear? A Sayori like you’s probably gonna _not_ wanna han— um, _spend time_ much with a Monika feisty enough to go throwing around chairs. Er. Chair.”

_(I don’t care if you say it, you know, I’m not_ **_fragile,)_ **

“Um… yeah,” says Sayori, rather lamely. “You’re probably right. Good… good luck?”

“Feels like I’m gonna need it,” replies Hallway-Sayori, “Good luck to you, too.”

And with that, the other pushes past Sayori, heading back down the hall the way Sayori had come.

_Be careful._

… Sayori squeezes the not-key in her palm, for a moment, before shoving it into her pocket.

She can understand, she supposes. She can even kind of empathize - had she been a thrower, herself, she probably would have clocked Adult Sayori upside the head with an errant tchotchke the second she’d thrown open the door and called out _“Helloooo~o!”_

Had her Monika appeared—

Well.

Sayori, going back on her word for one moment, shuts her eyes tight again as her heart squeezes painfully in her chest.

She would not have thrown anything, no. But all these Monikas… all these people. 

Sayori opens her eyes again, tears prickling at the corners of them.

There was no way that all of them - that even _most_ of them - had been in any way close _(fake_ close) to their own Sayoris. There were just too many different ways the pre-universe (the _fake_ universe) could initially generate. 

And even if they had been…

_(A warm summer’s evening; the roof of a local apartment complex. Spread blankets, cheap snacks, the shrill of cicadas - a secondhand telescope, an electric lantern, a hand-drawn map of the universe above. Two girls, joined hands, whispered secrets, laughter; a Sayori with a grin pulled ear to ear, eyes soft and sappy and gazing wonderously up at a Monika with a breathless sort of giggle and emerald eyes utterly brimming with starlight.)_

They would never be generated from the exact same seed.

Sayori sighs as she trudges down the hallway, every once in awhile hearing muffled phrases, the occasional plink of piano keys; reading door after door, number after number after number, but not finding much of any reason to open any of them. She feels bad - of course she feels bad. She’s walking right past an infinite-seeming array of Monika Monika Monika Monika, _suffering,_ and she’s doing nothing about any of it, because she can’t. She’s taken to chanting, internally, _Another Sayori will come for you. Another Sayori will come for you. Another Sayori will come for you._ Or she just doesn’t think she’d be able to take it.

(She pointedly, does _not,_ think about the fact that the reason she is standing here with the knowledge of God on her shoulders is due to a stranger’s _unusual_ dedication - she does _not_ think about the fact that it seems every Monika, _all_ of them, end up, eventually, in that endlessly-repeated room.)

So she does a _lot_ of walking.

Sayori walks. And walks. And walks some more. Sayori passes door after door, temperament after temperament; some with haste and some with a pang of sadness, a longing to have _asked_ about something on that placard or seen a promising possibility for herself. She passes “stubborn” and “responsible” - brushes past “sings off-key” and “social chameleon” - doesn’t stop for “reluctantly charitable” or “firm hand required”.

(She has resigned herself, two hours in, to taking a second, harder look all the way back down the line.)

But by the time she arrives at what she thinks is the end wall in front of her, she’s, for one thing, _kind_ of exhausted. Slumping down against the tile, she casts one, depleted glance up towards the final placard - the very, _very_ last door in the port.

———

Monika #851216

Emotional; prone to tears. Expresses abundant sentiment for original game runtime. Window-watcher.

-1,150

———

Sayori squints at that number. Rubs her eyes. It does not, as she was hoping, morph into a much more sensible ‘-115’ or ‘-150’.

Sayori sits against the opposite wall, and stares at the placard.

_One thousand, one hundred, and fifty._

Sayori thinks about that.

_Emotional... abundant sentiment..._

Sayori thinks about that, too.

_Window-watcher._

But Sayori thinks about that, most of all.

~~( Sayori thinks about a Monika with a beaten-up telescope, and eyes full of stars, and a life cut so short that Sayori’s fingers had bled where they’d once been joined with hers. )~~

Sayori wanders to the door, stands in front of it. 

Thinking. 

Lays a shaking hand against the solid wood, presses her palm flat. 

Thinking.

_One thousand..._

Thinking.

_(_ ** _”Yours_ ** _is dead, though. You wouldn’t exist otherwise.”)_

If nothing else, Sayori thinks, fishing the not-key from her pocket - one thousand, one hundred, and fifty would probably be enough of a starting point to smooth over any potential conflict.

She takes a very, very deep breath,

And, gently, opens the door.

* * *

To her surprise, letting the door swing shut behind her - she doesn’t _see_ a Monika here.

She does, admittedly, have to close her eyes for a minute. This room - the _room_ \- it’s still hard to stand in, even knowing it’s not ~~hers~~. There is a long moment where she thinks the water pooling in her eyes might drip free, but,

It’s only a moment, and she is here for a reason. She collects herself.

“Monika?”

She calls, tentatively. Taking another step, then another, into the quiet, seemingly-empty room.

“M-Monika? I... hello?” Sayori tries, again, her sneakers catching on the hardwood floor with hardly-graceful _squeak_ s. 

Sayori hears no answer.

_(Is she even still...)_

Then, she sees it:

One watery, emerald-green eye staring out at her from behind the desk.

Sayori stares back, startled by the suddenness of her noticing, before shakily raising a hand in greeting.

“U-Um... h, hey there, Monik—“

“You— You...”

Sayori stops short. Monika is rising from her protective stance; Monika is looking at her like she was someone— important. Monika is looking like she is about a second and a half away from starting to _cry._

Monika is moving towards her, slowly, hesitantly - but picking up pace.

“S-S— Sayori?”

“Um,”

“Sayori, you— Sa— _Sayori,”_

(Is getting a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach,)

“You, you came,”

(That is not going away the closer Monika gets.)

“You came _back!”_

Monika bursts,

Into a run, into _tears,_ trembling so wholly that Sayori doesn’t know how she’s still standing,

“Y—You came _back,”_ the brunette sobs, stopping just a step and two more away from Sayori - hands clenched so tight that Sayori almost manages to tear her gaze away from eyes that hold no guile, no anger, no malice and no attitude,

(And no _confusion.)_

Nothing but so, _so_ much need that it bled into terror; nothing but the most fragile kind of joy, pure and absolute, that the world could possibly offer.

The kind of joy that needed confirmation.

The joy of hope.

“Y, You came _back_ for me,” Monika says, shaking, looking like she dare not reach for Sayori lest she be revealed a _mirage;_ “You— l— like, like I wished for— S-Sayori,”

Tears, raw and full, dripping to the floor with an audible _plip._

“Sayori it’s been s— _so—“_ Monika makes a noise in her throat so soft and disbelieving that Sayori’s chest feels trapped in a vise. _”Long—_ I-I _missed_ you so— _o_ _much,_ I’m so _so— orry,”_ she _sobs,_ “For _everything_ I’m so so so so— I’m so so so so so so so so _sorry—“_

Monika

_Cries._

“I’m _so-orry!_ I was— I was so _horrible—_ and I shouldn’t have— you were gone then he was here then he was _gone,_ gone gone gone I should n— _ever_ have— you wouldn’tve— I didn’t _know!_ I didn’t _know—“_

“M-Monika,”

“I’m so sorry I’m so so so so sorry—“ Hiccup. “Please please _please_ please don’t go don’t go again— I just— I’m so _sorry—_ I wished— I _missed—“_

“M—Monika, please,”

“Y—You were so— _nice,_ so, so— you— you cared and nobody else— I was— _please—_ please Sayori, please, _please,”_

_Let me explain, Monika,_ **_please_ ** _let me explain - I’m not who you_ **_think_ ** _I am,_

Is what Sayori means to say.

But the next words fall out of Monika’s mouth like a wayward meteor, and Sayori is struck - for just a moment too long - by extinction.

“He didn’t care— about— _anything—_ about m, me— about, about c-lub— about our s, star chart— _anything—“_

(Sayori’s heart fractures.)

“He didn’t— he— he just _left,_ he left forever and— and I’ve been— I _missed, y-you, so,_ **_much,”_ **

(And shatters into eight hundred and fifty one _thousand_ pieces.)

“I’m, I’m so stupid— I was so _stupid—_ I’m so _sorry_ Sayori I’m so _sorry,_ I don’t— I can’t ever— I’m so s- _orrrryyy,_ p, _please,_ you can— you can— ju, just don’t, please don’t _l-le-ave,_ m-me—“

“Behind?”

Monika stutters to a halt. 

Sayori releases a shaky breath - and holds out her arms, traitorously.

“I would _never,”_ says Sayori, to a girl she has never once met. “I— I missed you too, you— you big sillyhead, w-why else would I have spent all this time _looking_ for you?”

Monika’s eyes widen; filling, like so much sparkling starlight, with _hope._

“Y— You were— Y… You were _looking,”_ she says, tremulous, hands releasing, voice cracking, “F— For _me?_ You… you w- _wanted_ to, to find— _me?”_

“Of course I did,” Sayori whispers. “We never…”

She sniffles, a thick lump settling heavy in her throat.

“W-We never finished our star chart, Monnie.”

Monika #851216 covers her mouth with her hands, a strained noise escaping her as all the hope in her eyes pools over,

And _runs_ into Sayori’s waiting arms, squeezing herself so tight around her chest that Sayori thinks - for one wonderful moment - that she might be crushed away into nothing at all.


	3. the way you trouble mine

Sayori has taken three showers over the past one-and-a-half days, and none of them have made her feel any cleaner.

It’s a real step back from how it felt _before_ all this started, when she was still tentative and poking at the console like you might a suspiciously-slumped animal; when she was learning, slowly, bit by bit how to take bits and pieces and write strings to tie them together into something solid and real. How it felt a day after countless shampoo experiments, finally getting it to look right and pour right and foam right and smell how she _wanted_ to smell like…

She drops the bottle unceremoniously back into the shower rack, squeezes the last dregs of soapy water from her hair - shuts the water off, and steps out, ignoring the angry red tint that her over-scrubbed body is starting to take on.

None of it really matters, anyway.

The moment her eyes fall on Monika #851216, sitting patiently in her bedroom and fiddling with Mr. Cow’s squishy hooves, every inch of Sayori’s skin feels coated in grime all over again.

“Ah!” 

Monika doesn’t feel that way, though - that much is evident in how her eyes widen, joyous and (somewhat relieved) every time Sayori passes into her sphere of consciousness. Monika is _always_ happy to see her again, and has raised no questions about the odd amount of self-cleansing, and all Sayori can do is crack yet another faux-cheerful smile.

“Hey, Monika,” she says - _oof! -_ and gives a more genuine cheerful laugh as Monika barrels into her arms again, a hug clearly her favorite manner of greeting thus far. “Mmmf— I was only gone, like, 20 minutes!”

 _“Long_ minutes,” Monika defends, nuzzling her face into the space between Sayori’s neck and shoulder for the duration of a peach-scented breath. 

“Okay, okay. 20 _long_ minutes,” Sayori concedes, patting Monika’s back softly as she relinquishes her grip. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” murmurs Monika, taking a seat once again - delicately perched on the edge of Sayori’s bed, hands clasping somewhat nervously in her lap. “You, um…”

Nervously. Why would she be—

“You wanted to talk to me about something?”

Ah. Right.

“Oh, right,” Sayori says, running a hand briefly through her hair as she glances to the left, the right. This conversation, the one she had been meaning to have…

… well, Monika had hardly been in a conversation-having state for the past day or so, anyway. If she was bringing it up now, they might as well get it over with.

“Well. Um…” she takes a breath. Where to _start?_ “... well, for starters, I guess we gotta talk about. Y’know,” 

Sayori gestures to _everywhere_ and _everything,_ but most pressingly, the fact that they were in her (intact) bedroom talking to her (intact) self.

“A-Ah.” Monika says, cheeks flushing in a manner that implied she had gotten the unsaid point. “I… I mean, I’ve been _meaning_ to ask…”

Sayori knows that is a bit of a fib, but she is a gracious person and she does not call that out. Instead she nods, crossing her arms loosely over her torso as she leans back against her desk.

“Yeah. So, you know,”

(Sayori is also, it seems, a hypocrite.)

“After you… after all _that,”_ Sayori says, with a wince and a wave of her hand, “At some point, I think, I sort of… woke up. I’m not quite sure— well, I guess I _wasn’t_ quite sure what had happened, there, but I think I can guess _now -_ since the game thinks _I’m_ Club President, that means it must have taken the designation off you and stuck it onto the vice, right?”

“E— Erm, I— yes,” Monika stammers out, chin resting between her fingers in a pensive manner. “I mean, that would make the most… but, the last person designated Vice President wasn’t…”

She glances away from Sayori, an uncomfortable guilt gathering in her eyes.

“Ah. Yeah, I know, it’s fine—” Sayori says suddenly - _I should be the guilty one here, if anybody! -_ holding out her hands placatingly. “I mean, you know what I mean. I think what happened is— well. I was still _here,_ you know? You just kind of put me... away… then, er, Yuri and Natsuki,”

_God what a topic of conversation._

“So I think it just defaulted to me! Either way,” she says, stomach twinging, “Something must have happened to make the game shift around the club roles…”

She trails off, watching Monika’s face carefully.

“... it could have just been a glitch,” Sayori offers, after a short moment of silence passes between them - but Monika, brow furrowed as she stares off to the side, certainly already has in mind what Sayori needs her to.

After all— she _needs_ Monika to think that this world, Sayori’s world, is the very same one as the one she’d left. She _needs_ to have an explanation that adds up as to how this Sayori, knowledgeable and Presidential, could be the same Sayori ~~that is certainly long-abandoned in a dead universe’s code~~. 

And who better to provide that explanation than Monika herself?

“N-No,” Monika says, gaze still cast away, “I— I think it might have been my fault ag— I think it mi, might have been my fault. I made a w—”

Shuts her eyes for a moment.

“The code— changes, when I think about it, when I, _will_ it to, and I… I thought very long and hard about…”

 _“Oh!”_ says Sayori, as though this is just occurring to her. “Oh— gosh, that’s not your _fault,_ Monika— well I mean, like, that’s not a _bad_ thing I mean! I’m here now, right?”

“R-Right,” Monika nods, after a second, “But…”

“But _nothing,”_ Sayori insists. “I’m here and you’re here and that’s what’s important.”

“Even— even if you’re… even if you have to—?”

“Even if,” Sayori says. _“Especially_ if, honestly, ‘cos do you really think I’d have such nice-smelling shampoo if not for that~?”

Monika squeaks under her breath, looking faintly embarrassed. Sayori grins with a shameless wink, ignoring the simmering ache in her chest in favor of _ensuring_ Monika’s assumption took.

“Aaanyway,” she continues, feeling confident enough now to stride over to the bed and take a seat on it herself, “Now that you _are_ here, we’ve… gotta figure out what to do next, I guess.”

She takes a steadying breath, then one more.

“We never did manage to get to the festival,” she admits. “Sorry. Between— looking for you, and learning the ropes of all this stuff… it just keeps resetting itself, for whatever reason.”

Monika winces.

“Sorry…”

“Eh?” Sayori blinks. “I don’t think it’s your fault, you know? Well… not on _purpose_ or anything, so there’s no reason to say sorry, right?” 

She squints playfully at Monika for a moment.

“... you _didn’t_ do it on purpose, right?”

“N-No!” Monika says, flustered. “Why would I have!?”

“I’m just teasing, Monnie, it’s okay! I don’t think you would have, really, I don’t!”

“...”

Sayori sighs, feeling guilty for a less-universal-stability-motivated reason, now. 

“Sorry, Monika, I was just playing…”

“It’s— It’s okay,” Monika manages, now fiddling with the end of her skirt, eyes turned downwards. Sayori frowns.

“... I’m really _not_ mad at you, or anything,” she says, inching closer to Monika. “I mean it. I, I know you weren’t doing any of it just to be _mean,_ and,” Well, “That’s… that’s all over now, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Monika mumbles.

“And we’re all still here, right?”

“... right,” she nods - then looks up, suddenly, worry evident in her face. “N-Natsuki and Yuri, they’re—?”

“They’re just fine,” assures Sayori, “They don’t even remember it, since it reset everything when, um, when the game reassigned me President.”

Monika’s worry morphs into a troubling expression of half-relief, half-disappointment, and Sayori can guess what it’s about.

“... they don’t remember you, either.” She admits, softly. “I, I’m sorry, Monika.”

“N-No, it’s— that’s quite alright,” Monika says, quickly, brushing invisible dust from her skirt, “I— should have expected that. Really. Besides, that’s… probably all for the better, I don’t know how they’d ever— I mean, you’re really the nicest pers— I, I mean it’s fine! Really, it’s fine,”

Sayori falters a bit, as Monika speaks, before she manages to get her feet back under her.

“U-Uhh, yeah— I mean not _yeah_ but— I think that this could maybe be an opportunity for a really good fresh start,” Sayori says, at least _trying_ to sound confident by the end. “You know, like, a— a way to just… to just be friends!”

Monika frowns thoughtfully.

“I… I mean, I guess that makes sense,” she says, “If they really don’t… _remember_ any of it, then…”

“Yeah!” Sayori exclaims, hoping she isn’t sounding a _touch_ too cheerful. “You can be our new fourth member, Monnie! Oh my gosh we can get Natsu to make cupcakes and _everything_ and—”

The corner of Monika’s mouth quirks up, a giggle escaping her. 

“... Sayori, you just want sweets again, right?”

Sayori blinks, mouth falling open slightly in protest. “What!? No, no I think this is a really good—”

She’s cut off as Monika giggles again, hand covering her mouth as if poorly attempting to hide it, and,

Oh.

_Ohhhh._

Monika finally grins, playful and wicked, as Sayori’s cheek puffs out in mock annoyance, bopping Monika’s thigh with a gentle fist.

“Nooo _fair_ turning the tables on me like that!!”

“I was just _playing,_ Sayori~!”

“Monikaaa!”

* * *

_“Okay, well, I’m going to go downstairs…”_

Sayori prides herself, some days, on being a pretty quick learner. And she has, _pretty quickly,_ caught on to the fact that this Monika truly cannot _stand_ being left alone.

So she isn’t surprised that Monika lasts about ten minutes before wandering downstairs after her. 

(She _is_ a little more surprised by Monika taking the seat next to her on the couch, leaning against her crunched-up legs, but once the initial jump in heartbeat has faded she reminds herself how much this Monika likes _hugging,_ too, and quits being surprised.)

“Boring up in my room?” She asks, anyway - her eyes are half-focused into the middle distance, leaning back on the arm of the couch as she idly spins a—

Well, not _a_ pen. _Monika’s_ pen, ~~though not _this_ Monika’s pen.~~ Sayori fidgets to remain focused, and clings to physical memories that can’t fade.

Monika makes a negative noise in her throat. “I just don’t li—“ Pauses, reshaping her statement. “I wanted to see what you were doing.”

The corner of Sayori’s mouth quirks up. “Sorry to report that I’m not doing anything very interesting either, Mons.”

“You’re _still_ fixing things,”

Sayori is caught off-guard both by Monika’s instant assessment of her activity _and_ the chastised, self-conscious tone she adopts. Quickly shaking her head (and pausing her typing _right_ where it was), she sits up, frowning.

“Oh, c’mon, none of that. I’m re-adding you to the character registry, Monika, I already said.”

“... it’s taking that long?”

“Er…” Sayori says, awkwardly rubbing behind her own neck. “It, uh, does take a little longer to add one than to subtract one.”

Monika winces, but nods.

“I…” she says, after a moment of quiet. “I could, um. I mean, I— it’s my fault it’s all broken in the first place, so I— could help you put it back—?”

_“No!”_

Sayori says this a lot faster and a lot more panicked than she would have liked to say it and the kickback, in the form of Monika looking absolutely _hangdog,_ is immense. The coral-haired girl flinches, puts up her hands.

“I, I mean— god, I’m sorry, Monika, I didn’t mean— it’s not like that!” She stammers out, “I, of course I don’t think you’re going to— it’s just,”

“I know, Sayori, it’s— fine, really. I know I did—“

“No, no, nononono it’s not about what you did. It’s just that

~~I _stole_ you, and I _lied_ to you, and I replaced your friend, and I’m making you replace _my_ friend, and if you open this console and start poking around you’re going to find out that I am _the scum of the earth and_~~

I think that I’m kind of.” 

Sayori thinks of how to put this delicately. 

“... ahead… of you,” she says, carefully, not quite meeting Monika’s eye. “I’ve kinda… uhhh. Been practicing a _whooole_ lot more than you really got to, I think.”

“... oh.” Monika says. “Right.”

“So it’s not that I don’t trust you! Really, Monika, it’s— it’s water under the bridge, honest. I just honestly don’t know if you’d even get what I’m doing by now, I… I mean, I’ve been adding a _lot_ of new stuff, like, and optimizing it and everything and…”

Sayori trails off. Monika has nodded along to what she’s said, but the other girl still looks absolutely _dejected,_ not that Sayori really blames her. She could probably reassure Monika that she’s not mad at her until the cows came home without putting even a _reasonable_ dent in the pent-up guilt that the former Club President’s been accruing for— _years._ Not even letting her _try_ to make right what she set wrong isn’t gonna _help_ that particular notion, is it.

… but still, she can’t just let Monika— _into all the files;_ Monika cannot, _cannot,_ find out about the true circumstances in which she came here - for her own good _and_ Sayori’s… so…

… Sayori adopts a very thoughtful posture, which quickly attracts Monika’s curious gaze.

“Look,” Sayori says, after a long moment. “Don’t get _too_ excited, but - I’ve got an idea.”

(And Sayori almost feels a little better, seeing Monika’s eyes light up again.)


End file.
